Racism In Schools

313 Words2 Pages
Race is a social concept that is used in our everyday perceptions of the people around us - whether consciously or unconsciously, it doesn’t matter. Juvonen et. al. investigate how the perceptions of safety and vulnerability are effected by the degree of ethnic diversity in schools, and in the classroom. By studying multi-ethnic schools in low SES areas, they tested for perceptions of safety, peer victimization, social dissatisfaction, and self worth. The reason they tested for these factors was to see whether a feeling of safety in school results in any developmental speed bumps, or not. There were two sets of results - one based on classroom diversity, and the other on ethnic diversity at the school level. At the classroom level, ethnic diversity had a negative correlation with perceptions of peer victimization and feelings of loneliness, while having a positive correlation with feelings of safety. Perceptions of self worth also increased with greater ethnic diversity. At the school level, results were the same except for self-worth These results can not be generalized to all schools and children, because the study was carried out in a a very specific location, therefore the sample was of children raised in the same social environment.. However, they still paint a positive picture, and beg for more research to be done. The department of education should fund researchers to look into how race is dealt with in schools (at all levels, from kindergarten to high school), so that educators can come up with curricula and classroom settings that are conducive to promoting feelings of racial equality, or even eradicating the concept of race from the minds of the students. Such changes are going to take a while to get into motion, but once in a state of inertia, they will start to break down the barriers put up by something as superficial as skin color.
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